David Ben-Gurion

Plonsk and the Making of a Zionist Organiser, 1886–1920

David Grün was born on 16 October 1886 in Plonsk, a town then under Russian rule that later became part of Poland.[1][2] His father, Avigdor Grün, belonged to the Hovevei Zion movement, an early group that backed Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel.[2] Ben-Gurion later wrote that his father gave him a love of the Jewish people, the land and the Hebrew language.[1] His mother died when he was eleven.[2] In 1900 he founded a youth society named Ezra to study Hebrew.[1] He joined the socialist-Zionist party Poalei Zion at seventeen and was arrested twice during the Russian revolution of 1905 to 1906.[2]

He emigrated to Ottoman-ruled Palestine in 1906.[1] In 1910 he began writing for the Poalei Zion newspaper Ahdut in Jerusalem and first used the name Ben-Gurion.[2] During the First World War he at first favoured cooperation with the Ottomans, including taking Ottoman citizenship.[2] The Ottoman authorities exiled him to Egypt in March 1915. He then went to New York and helped organise the Jewish Legion, a unit of the British army.[2]

Rise to Zionist Leadership, 1921–1947

In 1921 Ben-Gurion became secretary-general of the Histadrut, the General Federation of Labour in Palestine. He held the post until 1935.[3] He also helped merge two labour parties, Ahdut Ha’avoda and Hapo’el Hatza’ir, into Mapai, which led Israeli governments for the first decades of statehood.[4] In 1935 he became chairman of the Zionist Executive and of the Jewish Agency Executive, and he held both posts until 1948.[3] The Jewish Agency represented the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine. Within it he was responsible for security matters and laid groundwork for a future army.[5]

The Second World War sharpened his aims. In May 1942 an American Zionist conference at the Biltmore Hotel in New York adopted the Biltmore Program. It called for open immigration and a Jewish commonwealth after the war.[3] A British note to the U.S. State Department reported that the Jewish Agency Executive accepted the program by majority vote. It added that Ben-Gurion wanted the term Jewish state used instead of commonwealth and did not treat the program as a final statement of Zionist aims.[6] After the war he worked to turn Jewish displaced persons in Europe into a force for the Zionist cause.[3]

On 29 November 1947 the UN General Assembly recommended partition of Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, with a separate status for Jerusalem. It set 1 August 1948 as the latest date for ending the British Mandate.[7] The UN took no steps to implement the plan.[8]

Declaring the State and Imposing One Authority, May–June 1948

Ben-Gurion’s first defining decision was to declare independence in May 1948. On 12 May the People’s Administration, the Yishuv’s provisional cabinet, met in Tel Aviv. It weighed proclaiming a state against accepting a truce proposal pressed by the United States.[8] A common account says the body voted six to four for independence. Historian Martin Kramer reviewed the minutes and argued that this vote did not happen and that the decision to declare was never in doubt.[8] He found that a separate, narrow vote dealt with whether the declaration should set borders. The final text named none.[8][9] Kramer also notes that accepting the truce could have allowed the Mandate to be prolonged and a Jewish state deferred.[8]

Ben-Gurion read the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel in Tel Aviv on 14 May 1948. The text appealed to the United Nations for help, said Israel would share in advancing the Middle East, opened the state to Jewish immigration, and promised equal social and political rights regardless of religion, race or sex.[9] In the following days Arab states invaded.[10]

His second defining decision came in June 1948 in the Altalena affair. The Irgun, a Revisionist Zionist underground group led by Menachem Begin, had agreed in early June to join the new Israel Defense Forces (IDF). On 11 June it sent the ship Altalena from France with arms and close to one thousand immigrants and fighters.[11] Begin asked that one fifth of the weapons go to independent Irgun units in Jerusalem and the rest to the IDF. Ben-Gurion approved the Jerusalem share but ordered the remainder handed to the IDF without conditions.[11] On 20 June the government authorised force if the IDF’s orders were not obeyed. Fighting at Kfar Vitkin killed six Irgun fighters and two soldiers. On 22 June, at Tel Aviv, IDF forces under Yigael Yadin fought Irgun members and shelled the ship. Begin told his men not to return fire. Ten more Irgun fighters and one soldier died.[11] Ben-Gurion defended the action as necessary to impose one state authority, and the Irgun’s units were soon disbanded into the IDF.[12]

Statehood, Reparations and the Sinai Campaign, 1949–1963

Ben-Gurion served as prime minister and defence minister until late 1953, when he left office for Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev.[3][4] Immigration changed the country in these years. Central Bureau of Statistics data, reproduced by Germany’s Federal Agency for Civic Education, show a population of about 0.87 million in November 1948 and about 2.1 million in 1960.[13]

He also pursued rapprochement with West Germany.[14] The Knesset voted 61 to 50 on 9 January 1952 to back the government’s policy on German reparations. Protests led by Begin and his Herut party turned violent.[14][15] The agreement signed on 10 September 1952 committed West Germany to supply goods and services to Israel.[14]

Ben-Gurion returned as defence minister in February 1955 after Pinhas Lavon resigned, and he became prime minister again after the 1955 elections.[16][4] His third defining decision was the Sinai Campaign. Israeli government sources describe its causes as raids by fedayeen (Palestinian Arab infiltrators) from Gaza, Egypt’s blockade of the Straits of Tiran, and the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, announced on 26 July 1956.[17][18] Ben-Gurion favoured stiff reprisals. Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett had mobilised cabinet votes that blocked his earlier proposals to seize Gaza or the Tiran area, and Sharett announced his resignation on 18 June 1956.[19] Israel then held secret talks with Britain and France, who planned to intervene at the canal, and Israeli forces attacked on 29 October 1956.[18] Israel took Sinai and Gaza within a week and withdrew by March 1957. It gained freedom of navigation in the Straits of Tiran, and fedayeen attacks from Gaza fell sharply for several years.[17]

Other decisions marked these years. On 23 May 1960 he told the Knesset that Israeli security services had found Adolf Eichmann, who would be tried in Israel. Eichmann was executed in the night between 31 May and 1 June 1962.[20] On 3 October 1957 France and Israel signed an agreement for a 24-megawatt thermal reactor at Dimona. Ben-Gurion described the site in December 1960 as a nuclear research centre built for peaceful purposes.[21]

The Lavon Affair, Resignation and Final Years, 1963–1973

The Lavon affair brought his last term to an end. In 1954 an Israeli military intelligence unit ran Operation Susannah, a network of young Egyptian Jews that was exposed and put on trial in Cairo. A two-member commission reported in January 1955 and could not decide who had given the order. Defence Minister Lavon resigned in February 1955.[16] In 1960 information about forged documents and false testimony led Lavon to seek exoneration. Ben-Gurion first refused, then called for a state commission of inquiry. Mapai leaders opposed that step. A committee of seven ministers exonerated Lavon, and Ben-Gurion rejected its conclusions.[16]

The Foreign Ministry says he resigned in 1963 in protest at the moral aspects of the 1954 affair.[4] Historian Colin Shindler notes that early in 1962 he left an unsent resignation letter and demanded a judicial inquiry after the cabinet cleared Lavon. Levi Eshkol and other senior colleagues were unwilling to reverse the cabinet vote.[22] His campaign culminated at the 1965 Mapai convention.[16] He then backed the new party Rafi, which won ten Knesset seats.[4] He retired from politics in 1970 at the age of 84.[4] He died on 1 December 1973.[2]

Legacy

Ben-Gurion’s main achievement was to turn a national movement into a working state while it fought for survival. He declared independence in a text that rested the Jewish claim on historical ties to the land and on UN recognition.[9] He placed rival militias under one army, directed mass immigration, and led the state through the Sinai Campaign, which secured navigation through the Straits of Tiran.[11][13][17] Historian Anita Shapira, in a 2014 Yale University Press biography, treats 1942 to 1953 as his greatest years. She credits him with creating and exploiting the circumstances that made statehood possible. She also writes that, if democracy meant bowing to the people’s will, he was no democrat.[23]

In One Paragraph

David Ben-Gurion was born in Plonsk in 1886, emigrated to Palestine in 1906, and rose through the labour movement, the Histadrut and the Jewish Agency to lead the Yishuv. As Israel’s first prime minister and a long-serving defence minister, he declared independence on 14 May 1948, brought the Irgun under state authority after the Altalena affair, and ordered the Sinai Campaign of 1956. His government absorbed mass immigration, pursued German reparations and brought Adolf Eichmann to trial. Historians still debate his role in the Palestinian refugee problem and his handling of the Lavon affair, which ended his last term in 1963. He died in 1973 as the main founder of the State of Israel.

Sources

1. Yad Vashem. “David Ben-Gurion’s Early Years in Plonsk.” In The Story of Plonsk: A Jewish Community in Warsaw Province, Poland, online exhibition. https://wwv.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/communities/plonsk/ben-gurion.asp.
2. Jewish Agency for Israel. “David Ben Gurion (1886–1973).” Archive of Zionist leaders, entry 25952. https://archive.jewishagency.org/leaders/content/25952.
3. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Biography: David Ben-Gurion.” Collections catalog record pa28294, citing Israel Gutman, ed., Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York: Macmillan, 1990), 180–182. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa28294.
4. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “David Ben-Gurion.” In Facts about Israel: The State. https://embassies.gov.il/MFA/AboutIsrael/state/Pages/David%20Ben-Gurion.aspx.
5. Ben-Gurion House. “David Ben-Gurion.” Milestones timeline. https://bg-house.org/en/david-ben-gurion/.
6. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. “The British Embassy to the Department of State” (aide-mémoire on the Biltmore Resolutions), 1942. In Foreign Relations of the United States, 1942, vol. 4, document 662. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1942v04/d662.
7. United Nations General Assembly. Resolution 181 (II), “Future Government of Palestine,” 29 November 1947. A/RES/181(II). UN Digital Library. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/210008/files/A_RES_181%28II%29-EN.pdf.
8. Kramer, Martin. “The May 1948 Vote That Made the State of Israel.” Mosaic, 2 April 2018. https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2018/04/the-may-1948-vote-that-made-the-state-of-israel/.
9. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Declaration of Establishment of State of Israel,” 14 May 1948. Published in Official Gazette, no. 1, 5 Iyar 5708 (14 May 1948). https://embassies.gov.il/MFA/AboutIsrael/history/Pages/Declaration%20of%20Establishment%20of%20State%20of%20Israel.aspx.
10. Morris, Benny. “Deciding against a Return of the Refugees, April–December 1948.” Chapter 5 in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Published online 5 June 2012. https://resolve.cambridge.org/core/books/birth-of-the-palestinian-refugee-problem-revisited/deciding-against-a-return-of-the-refugees-aprildecember-1948/97C478F29314988AD12BC8078DF913C8.
11. Malul, Chen. “The Altalena Affair: When Israel Was on the Brink of Civil War.” The Librarians (blog), National Library of Israel, 2 December 2017. https://blog.nli.org.il/en/altalena/.
12. Center for Israel Education. “June 20, 1948.” Timeline entry on the Altalena affair. https://israeled.org/timeline/altalena-affair-state-authority-is-asserted-over-separate-military-group.
13. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. “Bevölkerungsentwicklung in Israel, 1948 bis 2007.” Chart citing Central Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Abstract of Israel, various years (1948 figure as of November). https://www.bpb.de/system/files/pdf/4T9A9H.pdf?download=1.
14. National Library of Israel. “The Reparations Agreement of 1952 and the Response in Israel.” The Librarians (blog). https://blog.nli.org.il/en/?p=95369.
15. Center for Israel Education. “Israel Accepts German Reparations.” Timeline entry for 9 January 1952. https://israeled.org/israel-accepts-german-reparations.
16. Mitchenik, Gideon. “Retrospective: From Olshan-Dori to Today: The Evolution of the Inquiry Committee.” Israel Center for Grand Strategy, 30 January 2025. https://icgs.org.il/en/publications/the-evolution-of-inquiry-committee/.
17. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “The Sinai Campaign (1956).” Maps section. https://embassies.gov.il/MFA/AboutIsrael/Maps/Pages/The-Sinai-Campaign-1956.aspx.
18. U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. “The Suez Crisis, 1956.” In Milestones: 1953–1960. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1953-1960/suez.
19. “The 1956 Sinai Campaign Viewed from Asia: Selections from Moshe Sharett’s Diaries.” Israel Studies 7, no. 1 (2002): 81–103. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/14489.
20. Israel State Archives. “Special Publication: Behind the Scenes at the Eichmann Trial.” https://catalog.archives.gov.il/site/en/chapter/behind-scenes-eichmann-trial.
21. Federation of American Scientists. “Israel: Nuclear Weapons.” https://nuke.fas.org/guide/israel/nuke/.
22. Shindler, Colin. “1962.” In Israel: A History in 100 Cartoons, 120–123. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. https://core-prod.cambridgecore.org/core/books/israel/1962/AF1851E61A7581DE23BF752E1C3F5204.
23. Gendler, Neal. Review of Anita Shapira, Ben-Gurion: Father of Modern Israel (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014). American Jewish World. https://ajwnews.com/?p=21942.